Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark: A STEMsational Conversation with Allen R. Wells and DeAndra Hodge

Do you know the story of Yvonne Clark? She was a pioneering African-American problem-solving mechanical engineer who worked on the Saturn V rocket boosters and moon boxes for astronauts. For 55 years, she taught mechanical engineering at Tennessee State University, where her story captivated her student (and later picture book biographer) Allen R. Wells. 

Discover how the remarkable legacy of engineer Yvonne Clark is inspiring the next generation through a gorgeous new children's book, Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark. Author/engineer Allen R. Wells and illustrator DeAndra Hodge help me delve into the world of STEM, storytelling, and the transformative power of diversity and inclusivity in literature. Join us in celebrating the legacy of Yvonne Clark and the power of storytelling to inspire future generations. 

Chapters:

1:03: Who Was Hidden Figure Yvonne Clark? Learn about this pioneering mechanical engineer in Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark, a must-have book for STEM and STEAM educators. 

7:50: Engineering + Artistry = Engineering Spark 

14:10: Adventures in Learning 

22:11: Incorporating STEAM Into Inclusive and Diverse Children's Literature 

Links:

• Order Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark 
• Follow Allen R. Wells on [Instagram/Bluesky/LinkedIn]
• Follow DeAndra Hodge on [Instagram/Bluesky/LinkedIn]
• Learn more about Yvonne Clark in Scientific American, Lost Women of Science, Society of Women Engineers, and Vanderbilt University

Transcript

00:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. For all of my teachers and librarians out there who work with STEM and STEAM, you are in for a treat. Today. We have the author and illustrator of Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark, which is the must-have book of 2025 that you need to put into your STEM STEAM libraries right now and it's not often you get both the author and the illustrator on a show at the same time, so we are so lucky. Allen Wells and DeAndra Hodge welcome, I'm so happy you're here. So this book is magical. Like I love the way you've taken a story. I love the way it was described as hidden figures meets Ada Twist, scientist in some of the reviews impact on the space program in so many ways. And then, deandre, your illustrations make it so accessible and lively and just bring it to life. Can you talk a little bit about who Yvonne Clark is and the process that brought you both together? 

01:16 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Sure. So first of all, I would definitely just like to sort of take like a moment to remember Yvonne, because today is actually the day that she passed in 2019. So I really like to take that time to like just honor her and her legacy and everything. And really, Yvonne Clark, she was just spark and developed it into this love for building things as an adult and figuring out how things worked as an adult, until she eventually landed at NASA. 

02:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And when she was at NASA, what were some of the contributions that she made? 

02:04 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
So she contributed to the Saturn V discovering the issue with the Saturn V rocket boosters, and she also contributed to the designing of the moon boxes that the astronauts were bringing samples from the moon back to Earth in. 

02:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And then you met her as your teacher. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

02:27 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Yeah, so I actually met her back in 2008 and at Tennessee State University. It was during like new student orientation and at that time my advisor wasn't available because he had another. He was just out of the out for the summer and so she was there and so I went up and introduced myself to her and told her that I was going to school for architectural engineering, and of course she told me that, well, architectural engineering is not that different from mechanical engineering, and so actually from then on, she kind of just took me under her wing and then, in the fall of 2008, when school started, she was actually my professor in my engineering graphics class, and in that class she was always on top of things, but she also focused on her students learning the basis of where, where all of this technology came from. 

03:33 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Wonderful. And then what sparked the book? 

03:39 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
I would probably. Well, that came like after college, like after I graduated, I made it. That came like after college, like after I graduated, I made it um. I made it um my responsibility to sort of keep up with her. And so, after even like Googling her just to see where she was at and everything, I found all of this information about her, about her past and about her, um, about her history, Um, and so, from then, my inspiration for writing Yvonne Clark it really just came from again from her being my former teacher, and then from that Google search where it kind of revealed the scope of like her groundbreaking work and everything. And then, back in 2017, I came across an interview with her and her daughter, Carol Lawson. It was a story storm interviews and that really like deepened my admiration for her resilience and innovation. And then, right, really, from that moment on, that's kind of like solidified my commitment to like writing her story. 

04:41 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's wonderful. And, DeAndra, how did you enter the picture so? 

04:48 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
a few years ago, when Alan had published the manuscript and everything, I got this really great email from my agent, christy, at the CAD agency, and she was like hey, deandra, there's this really cool book that Macmillan wants you to work on. It's about this woman named Yvonneandra. There's this really cool book that they that Macmillan wants you to work on. It's about this woman named Yvonne Clark. She's this really great scientist, this mechanical engineer and everything. 

05:12
And I already was like really interested in it, because this is the kind of book that I would have reached for on the shelf when I was like seven, eight years old, like in elementary school a book about like, like, like a biography and everything. So I wanted to jump on on the book already. But when I was reading the manuscript and I learned like, oh wow, she worked at the Space and Rocket Center and she worked on the Saturn Vibrocket. I'm actually from Huntsville, alabama myself, where the Space and Rocket, the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Space and Rocket Center, is, and we have like a giant replica of the space, of the Saturn V rocket, and so that's kind of like our thing. So I was like, oh, yes, I get to draw the Saturn V. It's amazing. So I jumped on it because it had like kind of a personal, like a personal attachment to me and then also I just was so interested in getting to learn about and illustrate the story of this amazing woman. 

06:13 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, Allen, you had an advantage in that you knew her. DeAndra, how did you go about creating the character of Yvonne Clark in the pages of the book? 

06:32 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
It's a great question. So I went mostly off of the manuscript since it was so informative about like the time that she came out in and so much about her life. I did my own research about what she looked like and everything because that was really important to try to capture that past, just like what she looked like but also kind of thinking about like what her personality was like. I remember in like my initial drawing stages of her as a child. I kind of had her like in this little like skirt and dress like which was typical for like a little girl in the 1930s. But I saw a little note in the manuscript where it said she wore dungarees and she was kind of like a little girl in the 1930s. But I saw a little note in the manuscript where it said she wore dungarees and she was kind of like a little bit more tomboyish. So I was like, oh, okay, I'll scrap that and I drew like this little girl in dungarees where she had a big front pocket so she could hold like tools and stuff that you see throughout the pages of the book. 

07:20
But yeah, I did a lot of my own research and Allen and the publisher provided so many great like visual, like pictures and everything of not just Yvonne but also other things from the past that I might have a hard time kind of finding on my own, like different blueprints for all the machines that I was going to have to draw, and like different toys, Like she had something called an erector set, which is kind of like a 1930s sort of lego in a way. 

07:49
So having to um having those on hand definitely helped me a lot with kind of figuring out the the look for Yvonne. And one little design note that I uh kind of incorporated was that no matter what like, no matter at what age, Yvonne is always wearing this color somewhere on her, whether it's like a headband, this like red colors like whether it's like a headband or like this little neckerchief or something, or maybe the color of her skirt, she's always got that bright red color which has kind of been synonymous with like the spark and everything. So I wanted to make sure that that kind of tied throughout the book visually. 

08:28 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, I love that. And, Allen, how did your engineering background help you in bringing her story to life? 

08:36 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
I would definitely have to say just being like understanding the different systems, because I knew about exhaust systems, although they're sort of different from like, although the exhaust systems that I work with in the industry are a little bit different from the ones that she was actually designing, but they still have similar structures, so it was like easy for me to like navigate how these systems work and how to translate them into a story for kids. 

09:03 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And I'm going to ask you guys in a moment if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit from it. Maybe each of you pick a favorite page or a favorite passage that you'd like to share, but what do you hope that teachers and students get from knowing the story of Yvonne Clark? 

09:18 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
I would definitely have to say, like overall, even if you don't have like an inclination for like engineering that you have the opportunity to really just discover your own spark. Like you have the tools, you have the information and resources available that help you fuel that spark I think similarly. 

09:39 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
Yes, I, I think most of all I want for the kids reading the book to know that anything is possible um, yvonne was just a kid when she, you know, fixed that toaster and so, even at like a young age, they're capable of so much and that they all have something deep inside them that is like a special talent or a special thing that they can do. That, even if it's not like a career, it's something that they can hold close and that they can cultivate over time and, just, you know, kind of hold that special part in them for forever and into the future. And so that's why yeah wonderful. 

10:19 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It seems like a beautiful way to honor her was. Did she know you were creating the book, Allen? 

10:25 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
uh, at the time she did not. Her, uh, her kids knew, but she didn't because she had passed away before like the whole, like before the the, I guess when, when I before I started to like dive really deep into like writing the story. 

10:41 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's what I was wondering. I'm sure she would have been so proud of you. 

10:45 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Yeah, her kids really enjoyed the book, like they love it. They said everything was like spot on. So that really made me feel really good about the, about the book, just because they were able to see their mother in the story and everything. 

10:59 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
What a beautiful gift to give to them, as well as to the rest of us. 

11:03 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Absolutely yeah. 

11:05 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So is there a page or a section you'd like to share with our audience? 

11:10 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Sure, definitely so. Yvonne Clark and her engineering spark. I actually have a few pages just from the illustrations and really just like the text too. 

11:34
So one of my like favorite pages and I told DeAndra this it was this page where she kind of transitions from like childhood to adulthood and the way DeAndra just drew the illustrations it was just like an easy, smooth transition, like when you think about a song transitioning to like another song. It kind of reminds me of that where it just like eases into childhood to adulthood. So that was like one of my favorite pages, like that full spread. 

11:58 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. How about you, DeAndra?

12:05 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
I feel like all the illustrations in here are like my babies. It's hard to pick one. Let's see, I really like the spot illustrations of Yvonne because she's just so engrossed in what she's doing and it kind of it kind of felt like I was drawing like a little bit of myself in this illustration, of like how I feel whenever I'm really like me, deep like in the zone in an illustration, um, and then I also really enjoy the end papers in the front. 

12:31
Um, I actually have like a funny little story about how I was trying to draw these blueprints, as if Yvonne would have drawn them as a child. But trying to draw something like a child is really difficult when you're like a grown adult artist. It's like trying to unlearn how to ride a bike, right, right. Actually asked my at, asked my at the time four-year-old little cousin, like can you draw a toaster for me so that I can have a reference for like what a child would draw? And so this was like a collaborative effort between me and my four-year-old cousin. 

13:03 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that. So in a way, you almost had to teach yourself to play to be able to do the end pages,

13:09 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
 Definitely.

13:10 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh, that's so much fun. What a cool way to build connections intergenerationally with what you're doing as well. So I want to get to know both of you a little bit better and the question I like to ask and you guys can decide who gets to go first but talk about your adventures in learning in terms of how you got to where you are right now. You know what was the spark that led you to what you're doing, and tell us a little bit about your body of work as well, because you each have really cool paths that you've traveled. 

13:41 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
You want to go first, DeAndra? 

13:42 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
Sure, okay first. So I've always been interested in art growing up. I just loved anytime I got to like just doodle in my notebook, maybe more than I probably should have in school. But, um, I think one of the ways that it kind of clicked for me, the type of art that I like to do, was when I was in my my English literature classes and, um, like we were discussing, like you know, books that we were reading and like the only thought in my mind was like how would I draw this out? Like how would I draw this scene from this book and everything, and so I kept like illustrating in that way, um, throughout high school, college. I went to college for art, um, and then afterwards, like I got a job as a graphic designer and then I was just like it was COVID, so I was just kind of by myself like in a new city with like no friends. 

14:36
so I definitely, like um, got involved in like an online art community where I would draw and just like post fan art from like my favorite shows. And eventually that got the attention of my now agent, christy um, and she was like, do you want to maybe do children's book illustration? And I was like, oh yeah, I've always wanted to do that, and so I signed on and then, like, one of the first projects I got to work on was a chapter book for the Batgirl Lele series from Nickelodeon, which was super cute. And then I got a four book, um middle grade contract for something called it's called Kid Confident. Like the Kid Confident series, I kind of describe it as like Ned's Declassified, but for mental health, for like middle school age kids, and so I feel like a lot of my work lately has been very bi biographical, which I am not at all mad at. 

15:33
I love biographies, um, I've always loved reading biographies as a kid, so, um books like Yvonne Clark and Engineering Spark, but also another book series that I really, really love called the Beyond the Game series, written by Andrew Moranis, and it features different athletes who are well-known in their sport but also like very active in like social justice sort of endeavors, like LeBron James and the Black Lives Matter movement, maya Moore and prison reform, and like we have a book about Pat Tillman and we have a book coming out this year about Jordan Marie Daniels, and I'm really excited for that one. She is a Native American runner who also brings a lot of attention and awareness to the missing and murdered indigenous women, and so I think that's a really important book that I'm very excited to come out this year. And so, yeah, that's pretty much all about me. 

16:34 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That's a lot, Allen. How about you? 

16:37 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Yeah, I feel like well. So my spark began in second grade. I'm not sure if you're like familiar with like the marble composition notebooks. 

16:45 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh yeah. 

16:45 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Yeah, when I was in second grade, my second grade teacher gave everyone in the class one of those marble composition notebooks and we had the opportunity every morning to like journal our thoughts or journal or write like a story that sometimes they'll give us an idea for a story. And after we had the opportunity to write in our journals, they would ask some of the kids if we, some of the students, if we wanted to come up and share our stories. I was a little bit reluctant at first, but then I wrote a story. I forgot what it was about, but I ended up going up and reading the story and my classmates were fascinated by the story. So from like then on, I just continued to like write as a kid and read and write as a kid because I loved going to the library as a kid, read and write as a kid because I loved going to the library as a kid. And I think it wasn't until like 2001 when I sort of like learned to love math and science because I was good at math and science. And then, like the early 2000s, there was this big push for kids and STEM and STEM and engineering, and so that's one of the reasons why I ended up going into engineering. But throughout my engineering matriculation, or math and science matriculation, I was still taking creative writing courses and books on writing for kids. And when I was in college I ended up getting a job at Toys R Us and I worked there for about six years and at Toys R Us we also sold kids' picture books and so I was always in the kids' picture book section reading the children's picture books, because it was sort of reminiscent of my childhood, Because as a kid I was a very avid reader and that really reignited my love for writing kids' books. 

18:30
And, sort of like DeAndra, I found a community, a writing community. 

18:33
It was through SCBWI and when I connected with them I knew that I was supposed to be a writer. 

18:40
I mean, I was supposed to be an engineer too, but I knew that I was supposed to be a writer. And, like in 2013, when I was in college, I like self-published my first kids picture book. Like I went on online and kind of did this whole search for illustrators and then I ended up self-publishing my first book, Miss B and Her Wondrous Bees, and then from then on I still continued to my engineering courses until I finally graduated, but then I also knew I had this passion for writing and that's when I started like really reaching out to agents and editors and publishing companies. I still have like the physical copies of all the editors well, the writer's digest to have like the list of all the publishers and everything, and I would mail out 50 snail mails like a month trying to get my you know work out there and everything, until I eventually landed an agent and with with her I've published two books that came out last year it's Pride Baby and then Dante Plays His Blues. 

19:47 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I am so impressed as I've been looking at both of your catalogs of work, because part of what I do is I work with college students and we talk about children's literature and I work with college students and we talk about children's literature, and I work with college students who are teachers and librarians and a huge part of our work is talking about Dr Rudine Sims Bishop, and the importance of windows and mirrors and sliding glass doors, and I feel like the catalog of work you all are putting out there really allows kids to see themselves and to gain empathy and develop appreciation for others, and it's another reason I feel like people need to stock your books in their classroom and school libraries. They're just beautiful in that regard. Is that intentional in terms of sort of the projects you choose to work on, or is that something, that sort of the projects you choose to work on, or is that something that sort of has happened as time has gone on?

20:45 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Well, I would definitely have to say for me like I feel like I'm a multifaceted human being, so I feel like my experiences is just not engineering, it's just not writing, so I feel like it's a, it's a combination of things. So I feel like I have um a responsibility to kind of like share all aspects of of of the world so that the kids can understand the world in a healthy way same thing. 

21:11 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
Uh, I, I think I definitely do gravitate more towards the book projects that come my way where I can very easily see not just myself but also like my like. I have a lot of younger cousins, nieces and nephews and everything, and I think about the fact that they're probably going to like read a lot of these books that I put out and so I think of like, okay, what are kind of the types of books I want them to read? Like, what are the types of books I feel like are needed and everything? I feel like it, you know kind of my duty to make those kids feel seen, make lots of children feel seen in the book projects that I work on. So, even if, like, the subject matter is like a specific type of child, in the background, you're going to see people of many different you know, ethnicities, races, religious backgrounds and different types of ability and whatnot, and so I think that that's my duty as an artist to make people feel seen in some way. 

22:11 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think you both very much succeed in bringing that to the world. You know we talk about STEM and STEAM and for those who are listening, we know STEM is science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Steam puts the A in the arts into it, and I think often we think that you have to go in and put a lab coat on to be somebody doing STEM or STEAM, and you're both really good examples of careers that maybe incorporate STEM or STEAM but aren't necessarily the stereotypical ones. Can you talk just a little bit more about how you might use STEM or STEAM in the stuff that you do? 

22:54 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Well as a children's book author, I feel like there are a lot of STEAM influences in the things that I write, because I mean, when you think about it, we're all, at the end of the day, we're problem solvers. We're taking our stories and we're trying to solve it and turn it into like this cohesive beginning, middle and end, and that takes a lot of again, like problem solving, and with engineering you're also it involves a lot of teamwork. So I mean it still incorporates those same or the same elements as you would in. You're applying the same elements as you would in writing and illustrating as you would in engineering. You may not be as technical on them, like with math and science, but you're still applying those I would say like soft skills that you would typically see in both. Yeah, yeah. 

23:55 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Nope, I totally get that and you bring a certain flair to that as well, because you do stem and steam in your job as an engineer and so you've got sort of that way of seeing the world that you're able to bring to the craft as well and help kids maybe demystify that a little bit, as you said, by breaking down those different skills that we need the critical thinking, the creativity, the problem solving. And DeAndra, I know you use it, you do the arts piece of it, but you do an awful lot of research to go into your biographies and into your books. So it seems to me like you're using the scientific method and the scientific process a lot as you're doing your work. 

24:40 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
Definitely. I definitely think in art there's a lot of problem solving, especially in illustration, where you have certain parameters of like, oh, it has to fit these dimensions You're talking about this person from this time period Even just like like kind of gaining a visual style is just a series of problem solving, like how do I depict this thing? How do I draw this sort of thing? Like, how do I solve the problem of like perspective and everything. And my perspective is very like I feel like science heavy, because you have to think about like what looks right and everything. And so having to problem solve like how to convey a certain illustration in what you're doing takes a lot of like, a lot of thinking. 

25:34
I feel like there's a lot of thinking and planning beforehand, like a lot of people like people mainly just see like the, the final product, but they don't see like the millions of thumbnail sketches and like um other sketches that I do and then the revisions from that of like oh, this works, but this doesn't. Why doesn't this work? Why does this convey one feeling versus another? Um, I think also in the uh on that, on that uh last note about like feelings and everything. Like color theory is a whole thing, like it's psychological and everything you have to think like why do we feel sad when we see blue? Why do we feel happy when we see yellow? Like why what colors mean certain things? And even thinking across cultures, like what do certain imagery mean and how can you convey that into your illustration. So there's a lot of thought that goes into the process of creating an illustration that I think not a lot of people really know about, and so yeah, that's really, really exciting. 

26:40 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Are you all going to be doing school visits and um things to promote the book and to talk about what you're doing? 

26:46 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
we've done a few um. Yeah, we did uh one at medfield heights in baltimore and then we did another uh library visit at um at the waverly branch of the enoch pratt library in baltimore. 

27:01 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
That was really nice to do that and if people would like to book an author visit with you virtually or in person, how would they go about doing that? 

27:13 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
uh, you can go to like. They'll have the. They can either go to like one of our um our websites or um one of our um our websites or um one of our uh social media, um Instagram or uh Facebook. Yeah. 

27:25 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Okay, and I know you're on blue sky as well, so I'll make sure I post your uh handles in the show notes. So last question for today Um, it's a question I ask everybody is what brings you hope? 

27:46 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
 I would definitely, for me, I would say my niece and nephews. Like every time I bring like a like one of my like a fresh book home or something, and they're just so amazed by the fact that I've like written the book. And yeah, I would definitely just say I get a lot of my hope from my nephews and my niece. 

28:03 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
Yeah, I think for me, it's the kids that I teach. Uh, I teach uh part-time as an after-school art teacher, mainly teaching like comic book illustration and children's book illustration, as well as like a like an arts class for some younger kids. But I I think one thing that's worried me over the years has just been like, oh, the arts don't really get like that much funding in schools and everything, and I feel like that was so important to me that I feel like there are kids that are going to fall through the cracks and not really have that. But every day, every day, I go into work, no matter how tired I am, no matter how, like you know, like exhausted I am from all the several different bus rides I have to get to get to the school on time. 

28:52
You know, I'm always like filled with like this energy and this joy whenever I come into class and I see, like you know, my kids having like all these amazing story ideas or their comics or their illustrations, and I'm just like these are genuinely so good, like they're so talented, they're so into what they're doing with this art, and like I have them for an hour and it's like they just like throw everything at me of like oh, this is what I want to write about today, this is what I want to draw today, and this is what I want to draw today, and I'm like you guys are like I just want them to like, keep that for as long as possible, and that just makes me really happy and fills me with a lot of hope for, like you know, the future artists and illustrators in the world. 

29:35 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, thank you so much for joining me on the Adventures in Learning podcast today. You all bring me hope and I strongly encourage everybody to get a copy of Yvonne Clark and her Engineering Spark, but also seriously check out the catalog of Allen Wells and DeAndra Hodge. They have so many amazing books and you're going to want to add them all to your collection. 

29:56 - DeAndra Hodge (Guest)
Thank you so much for having us today. 

29:58 - Allen R. Wells (Guest)
Thank you so much yeah.